Dead Man Walking
by RenegadeLegacy
Summary: PG for minor cursing. A character we all know and.. um.. know.. reflects on how much his life currently sucks. I know I'm going to get flamed for this..


Dead Man Walking

Dead Man Walking

It was out of his hands now.

Okay, so it wasn't. He dearly wished it was. That he wasn't constantly faced with these choices that were hardly choices at all. It was do it or die, and if you fail… he shuddered at the thought of what happened then.

He'd known from the moment he'd gotten into this mess that he wasn't behind the wheel at all.

__

Sometimes I feel  
Like I am drunk behind the wheel  
The wheel of possibility  
However it may roll

He'd only known for about five minutes or so, however, what he was thinking about now- that constant fear of a thing was often worse than the thing itself.

For so many years, he'd lived in constant fear of being killed- by his master for incompetence, by his once-friends for what he'd done- hell, at one point even by _himself_ for _that_.

On the other hand… was he just going to be fortune's fool? Slave to the circumstances?

__

Give it a spin  
See if you can somehow factor in  
You know there's always more than one way  
To say exactly what you mean to say

The more often he thought about it… he knew there really was no way out. His greatest fear, for so long, had been death… but if he tried to escape it, he'd be killed. If he stayed put, it might take a little longer but he'd still be killed. If he kept doing whatever his master said (as he'd been doing for more than a year) it would take quite a long time but he'd still be killed. Whether by his master for screwing everything up once again or by someone else… by one of the only ones who didn't think him already dead.

__

Was I out of my head? Was I out of my mind?  
How could I have ever been so blind?  
I was waiting for an indication  
It was hard to find

But he _was_ already dead.

The ultimate horror of the coward, he thought bitterly, I'm a dead man walking.

__

Don't matter what I say only what I do  
I never mean to do bad things to you  
So quiet but I finally woke up  
If you're sad then it's time you spoke up too

On the other hand…

If fate guaranteed his life an ending, what tragedy did he choose?

A triumphant one. Tentatively, he turned this new thought over in his mind.

If I'm already dead… then there's no reason for me to fear death… fear's the only tool he ever had… the only hold he had over me…

His mind was reeling, faster and faster, into overdrive…

Oh, clever Master, you've missed the crucial fact… if my devotion is nothing more than cowardice, then how dangerous must it be to rely on something in which what's needed is courage from_ me_? It works and you gain an enemy in me- clumsy and incompetent though I may be…

How could he have missed it before?

__

Was I out of my head? Was I out of my mind?  
How could I have ever been so blind?  
I was waiting for an indication  
It was hard to find

But it would be foolish, he thought, to announce sudden defiance. He wouldn't _simply_ die- everyone knew what happened to the defiant, and by the time that was over they had _begged_ him for death- and nothing would happen.

But he could wait. That was what he could do. Wait. He'd gotten _good_ at waiting. Stalling the inevitable, perhaps, but that was what life was, wasn't it? Stalling the inevitable? No matter what you did, you died eventually.

This had been illustrated quite graphically to him of late.

Results. This had also been driven home. When you did something, it didn't matter whether it was an accident, whether you'd been forced, or anything. You could say "I had no choice," "I didn't know," or "It's not fair," but, guess what? No one was listening.

He'd learned that he hard way.

It was what you did that mattered. Not intentions.

__

Don't matter what I say only what I do  
I never mean to do bad things to you  
So quiet but I finally woke up  
If you're sad then it's time you spoke up too

It was amazing how little you were afraid of when you knew you'd got nothing left to lose. Being as good as dead already was an oddly freeing sensation. When all you had was nothing, nothing could be taken away. Amazing, really, how you could derive hope from the icy knowledge that you'd lost all hope.

__

Was I out of my head? Was I out of my mind?  
How could I have ever been so blind?  
I was waiting for an indication  
It was hard to find

Peter Pettigrew stood up straight for the first time in ages. He'd been slightly chubby before, but it's incredible what not eating much- or sleeping for more than five minutes at a time, for that matter- for the better part of a month can do to change that kind of thing. Anyone watching- and no one was- would have noticed that he suddenly looked completely different. His eyes no longer darted around in their sockets as if looking for a way out, and he no longer appeared poised to run.

__

Don't matter what I say only what I do  
I never mean to do bad things to you  
So quiet but I finally woke up  
If you're sad then it's time you spoke up too

[a/n: ~coughs~ I wrote this in response to all the bad feeling everyone seems to have toward Wormtail. I just know I'm going to be flamed…]


End file.
